Mentat's Blog

This was a brilliant Piece of improve.

http://improveverywhere.com/2010/07/14/star-wars-subway-car/

in short 5 people got dressed up. Leia, stormtroopers and vader entered a subway train car and then proceeded to play out the capture scene in A New hope.

In a not so surprising turn of events. When the players decided to take matters into their own hands and started to post information that was publicly attainable and for free the names and addresses of higher end Blizzard and Activison employees they suddenly. To Change their mind on the subject.

Nathaera posted a notice from the co-founder of Blizzard officially changing their tune. The word is that Blizzard isn’t going to force players to use their real names but instead use battle.net names with a number value that will remain static.

Full post is listed here. I’ve posted it below for people who do not have access to blizzard forums while at work.

Hello everyone,

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

Clearly they did listen. A thread that goes 2,600+ pages of outcry is hard to ignore. Blizzard made a terrible PR move even considering this. I’m glad to see it change.

My personal grips were more than just my public name. It’s that they always said that usage of the forums were optional, however I cannot count the number of times I was told that I’d need to Take my issue to the forums Which makes my usage of the forums not-so-much-optional anymore.

Anyone who plays World of warcraft and frequents their forums knows of how troll infested they are. It’s beyond stupid. Blizzard has implemented something called “realid” It allows us to track our friends by first and last name .. real names across server lines and be able to talk to them This alone is pretty cool. I’d only use it for people who I do know in real life and anything that falls into the gray area is going to be ignored.

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that everyone on the forums is going to be forced to use their Real ID. When this goes live all 11 million players now have their Identities just hanging out there. The reason?

The Trolls. Forums Trolls. There are lots of people who log into the forums to mock, make fun of and otherwise tear down people. If people are held accountable then the theory is that it will stop. This is an interesting Idea in practice but in actually implementation it’s a nightmare.

Currently, there are companies that when they start doing interview request your facebook/myspace account. They want to know what you do on your off times. I know people personally who have lost job opportunities because they play games. Because the supervisors view games as if they are “for children”. Not realizing that it’s an escape for many people from their real lives. It’s a mini vacation every single day.

The amount of damage that can be done by your own name if someone steals your ID information is absurd.
I’ve been playing wow for years, and this may be the final straw. If I ever find that I have to use the forums for any reason at all, I’ll just cancel. My privacy is more important than blizzard trying to get their out of control trolling issues under control. They would be better off re-establishing guidelines making them more strict then start banning people left and right for 3 days at a time

OR.. here’s an EASY TO DO thought for you blizzard. FORCE people to use 1 name. no more hopping characters. While it’s not their real name they will be quickly discounted as being a troll and people will stop reacting to them.

Either way, this is a stupid move Blizzard.

“Tiger Woods is out on the course playing new holes.”

Wow.. pushing for advertising much?

My president is a Jedi, your country is invalid.

click image for full size

I’ve come up with a name for specific situations. I’ve deemed this “The blizzard effect”.

Most gamers and non gamers alike know who, what, and/or at least have heard of World of Warcraft. When WoW First went public, it was ran sacked with hackers, item dups, money dups, 3rd party programs that would level your character and craft *FOR* you. To attempt to control this complete out of control situation, Blizzard introduced a monstrosity into the internet with something they called the Warden client.

The Warden client alone is single handed one of the most invasion programs I’ve ever ran through a de-compiler.

It loads with the launcher, then loads into memory and sits dormant for an unknown amount of time, until something is sent over the TCP/IP line to trigger it and turn it on. It at that point scans your task bar, what you have open, what webpages you have open what programs/processes you have running, if you have your Root directory of your C: open in a window it’ll scan through every folder on your drive looking for anything that might be suggestive that you Hack.

They have security reasons for doing this and it has cut down and eliminated this kind of cheating. It doesn’t change the fact that the Warden client is still scanning your tax records, photos of your family and your private porn collection of your spouse/wife. The client can be disabled using the Sony Rootkit, which if you know how to use it will pull it out of memory. Those instructions are readily available but not easily follow. Most are written obscurely.

The reason why I bring this up is because clever hackers have gotten a hold of it, reverse engineered it, and are using its roots to do exactly what it’s intended to do. Personal invasion, secondary effect. Infect people with Viruses, and probably attempt to steal password, and Credit card Social security numbers. They take screenshots of popular scanners and copy their interface they check your processes to see what’s running, download the proper interface to make you *THINK* that you have a virus and wait for you to click a button so it can install itself on your machine. Most of this really high virus technology, is already programmed into the delivery method via the Warden Client, that blizzard now provides to all hackers free of charge!

Blizzard updates the warden client to keep it from being removed, and Sony releases a new root kit for other reasons, which just happens to also remove the new warden client, and viola, the blizzard effect strikes again now new and improved and even HARDER to get rid of.

Symantec posted on it’s blog that it uncovered a server that had 44 Million stolen gaming accounts. The numbers and values of said accounts ranging in price from $5  to $28,000 .

World of Warcraft for example had 220,000 stolen accounts in this database. two of the biggest “losers” in this DB was A company called Wayi Entertainment. Which is a Website in Taiwan, which I’m not sure if it’s peddling Hentai, mail order brides or if it’s a dating website.

And PlayNC which is a division of NCsoft. (Guild wars, City of Heros, Linage 2)

For  more information click the attached link

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/44-million-stolen-gaming-credentials-uncovered

Last friday, in commemoration of pac-man being 30 years old google changes their logo to a playable version.

Google Celebrating 30 years of Pac-man

This to me, was ingenious.

This morning I was pointed to another article.

http://www.crn.com/it-channel/225200162;jsessionid=UXFSVLVOSKLAZQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN

This one citing that “Online denizens spent over 4.8 million hours playing Pac-Man on Friday”

Now, Pac-man was easily one of my first video games.  Most anyone over the age of 21 has seen or played pac-man, and at least knows what it is.  The insert coin button gave you two simultaneous players.  sharing the same lives, so you had to be careful. When I got to level 9 I realized that I had been playing too long and I had to force myself to stop for the day. 4.8 Million hours played in a 24 hour period. I’d believe it I know I contributed to a fair amount of time on it. I’ve had to keep myself from playing it again today now that I’ve found it again.

Addicting…  yet so nostalgic.

Props to Google, this was simply genius.

And incase you lived in a cave on friday. the pacman logo is still available to play

http://www.google.com/pacman

I read this article written by Jaime Skelton, about Real death in a virutal world, I felt it meritred repeating as most people just *don’t* get it.

—-

The virtual worlds we live in like to gloss over issues of mortality. In most MMOs, characters die and then can instantly respawn, either at a graveyard located not too far from the scene of their death or, in some circumstances, right at their freshly-fallen corpse. Even many of the game’s heroes seem incapable of dying, coming back in a phoenix-rising fashion, while villains merely have setbacks. In order to preserve a perpetual world, MMOs offer a sense of perpetual life.

In a sea of anonymity, where even in the darkest world life is still pretty good for the player character, it can be easy to forget that somewhere beyond the renders and wild landscapes, beyond the outlandish armor and flawless persona, there are real people. This is an argument often brought up when players find themselves ruthlessly trolled, insulted, and harassed online by the anonymous crowd, a group of people who feel it’s safe to say whatever they like because there are no real world repercussions. Set aside the crude behavior, however, and you’ll find that every player is at some point guilty of showing a lack of human awareness for the person on the other side. This ignorance isn’t usually voluntary; the nature of our gaming simply creates a wall that acts as any long-distance communication does. It prevents us from the face-to-face, non-verbal communication that proves crucial to human understanding.

Words like “cancer”, “hospital”, and “coma” have a draw powerful enough to bring a person out of their virtual sanctuary and into the realm where life and death situations are real. These are words I’ve had to deal with this week, as I received surprising news that a dear uncle of mine had cancer, was in the hospital in a coma, and wasn’t expected to make it through the night. My uncle isn’t a gamer, but his sudden plight – and the word “cancer,” which chills me deep in my marrow every time I hear it – brought to mind the second person I loved and lost to cancer in my life.

I met Naganatae in Lord of the Rings Online. She was a deeply dedicated officer of the guild I had joined, and would spend her entire day working hard to help both the guild as a whole, and to help individual members. By all online appearances, she appeared to be one of those people who didn’t “have a life”; the kind that lived off of Cheetos and Dew in mom’s basement while spending all their time online. Given that “Naga,” as we called her affectionately, was a very secretive, quiet person, it was easy for anyone to make assumptions about her and her lifestyle.

Over time, I got to know Naga better, and we soon became fast friends. She was still very secretive, but I found we had many interests and viewpoints in common. There were days when she would suddenly get upset and log off, or she would say she was feeling sick and disappear for a few days before returning. Every time she came back, however, she promised me she was okay. I believed her.

It wasn’t until the last month I knew Naga that I found out “sick” meant cancer. She made me swear to secrecy; even our guild leader, a very kind and empathetic man, had no idea. There were only three of us who knew her condition, and only one who knew how bad it really was. When she disappeared from having ISP problems, and time passed into over a month, the one person who knew her best finally voiced his fears and said that he was sure she had passed away. It wasn’t until a few months later that we received the obituary and I found out so much more about the friend I had lost; how amazing she was as a person in the real world as well.

You can call me a sap, but life in LotRO was radically changed for me after losing Naga. I tried to hold a memorial service for her with the guild, but plans failed to follow through. I fought with other guild members who hadn’t been as close to Naga as I had, and didn’t show the level of mourning I wanted them to in my own grieving state. My interest in the game faded fast, and I eventually quit. Even though I’ve returned to LotRO since then, I haven’t been able to bring myself to the multi-game guild (which I’m still a member of) or even the server I once played on. It’s as if I’ve been frozen in that emotional moment.

The loss of an online friend is nothing new, but something experienced on a larger scale when it happens in an MMO context. A player may have been known by hundreds in his gaming community, even though very few may have actually known the person behind the avatar. Not many people are forthcoming about their personal mortality in a virtual setting; it’s as if we want to minimize our impact if we should “go.” We want our lives to remain anonymous, even to the point of shielding some good friends from the truth.

When death strikes an online friend, it’s hard to know exactly what to do. There are no established standards of etiquette or grieving for virtual worlds. Certainly many of the stages of grief are the same as losing someone you knew in person, simply because the understanding of another human being’s identity crosses long-distance barriers. Some things, however, get lost in translation of distance and personal, physical connection. There is no attending funerals for closure, no connection with family and friends outside the virtual space, no easy way to obtain real-world information to pay a visit to a grave or send condolences to a family.

To the outside world, the grieving that online players suffer seems strange. Many grieving players have been told, “They were just an online friend – it’s not like you actually KNEW them.” The assumption is that online relationships have less value, less emotional meaning, than in-person relationships. While I’m not one to idealize text or graphically simulated relationships, there is plenty of evidence that online relationships can offer, at the least, the foundation for meaningful interpersonal relationships. That is to say that there is some essence of a “real” relationship when we speak with and get to know other people in cyberspace. Our grief, too, is real, even when the relationship developed had no in-person contact.

In order to cope with their loss, many players set up memorial services and role-played funerals. These events can be a great method of closure, but often end up experiencing a different matter of ‘grief’ as other players intrude on the ceremonies to disrupt and disturb them. Such acts are often a mix of intent to make other people miserable, and a political statement made to mock emotional attachments to virtual relationships. Funeral crashing is nothing new, however, and little can be done except to make ceremonies more private and to report offending players for harassment.

Closure is better found elsewhere when it comes to grief and loss in virtual worlds. Our virtual gaming communities are not geared well to cope with death, something that seems to result from the lack of in-person interaction that can offer physical comfort – a hug, a smile, and physical closeness that offers a specific psychological benefit. The best thing to do when confronted with loss is to turn to the people who can offer that physical closeness and comfort, to the same people you’d seek out when losing a friend in the “real” world. Then find a way to honor the person you lost, in a way you know best to do. For some, that may simply mean taking a meaningful action in-game. In my case, losing Naganatae made me take up supporting cancer research in her honor.

Death may be the hardest confrontation for any player. For all that have lost an online friend, and for all those that will, know that your grief is normal and that you are not alone. After all, there are people being the characters we meet, and some can touch our lives quite profoundly.

–

I wasn’t going to write about this because it’s everywhere but it’s finally getting under my nerves.
So a random Apple Employee “Accidently” left an Iphone 4g Prototype on a barstool. A guy found it. Contacted apple who blew him off. So he contacted the guy who ran Gizmodo, and sold it to him for 5k. Gizmodo then contacted Apple who said “No that’s not a prototype it’s fake” so They did a review on it and took it apart. GIzmodo made 220k in Revenue for showing the prototype. Apple then comes out and says “Oh okay.. yes it is.. can we have it back?” and Gizmodo returned the phone to them, as long as apple promised to not raid them.

Apple agreed.

A week later, The police raided his house confiscated 4 computers and the signed agreement from apple saying that they would not go after them, and now Apple is sueing for Stealing? Are you serious? Following which, they raided the guys house who FOUND the phone in the first place? Both people which if who ATTEMPTED to return the phone to Apple, both times to be told that no no it’s not the real one.

I’m disgusted with Apple and the way that they have handled themselves. This comes after closing the platform making apps far more restrictive. Removing apps from the appstore and then blaming someone else for a company mistake?

I cannot possibly be the only person finds this ridiculously stupid. I hope Steve Jobs pulls his head out ass soon. They opened being against big brother, not being like everyone else. They made a Statement when they went public which their ad campaigns. Now you ARE Being Big Brother. You ARE another Monolithic Microsoft-cloned asshole. I was seriously considering dropping Linux and Windows entirely to go to a MAC-OS platform. But if this is how you treat people who tried to RETURN a phone that your employee is responsible for losing? You break your promise to not raid someone’s house and then turned your back on your word and did it anyway?

You’re a damn communist Steve Jobs. Considering how you treat your employees and your avid and loyal customers, which I’ve covered in detail in a different post, you’re a controlling manipulative bastard. You’ve done this once before and it caused you to lose your company the first time 20 years ago. Maybe you remember it, and maybe you’ll stop yourself before you get your ass kicked out again.

SPOILER… it’s obvious.. Buffy never loses… This video is up for a Webby Award in the mashup section. GO VOTE and support this BRILLIANT piece of Video!

http://www.youtube.com/webby?x=remixmashup

The Original

The Remix

A couple of people who commented on the Remix in the webby awards illustrated a very specific point that I have unable to put into proper words. I want to quote them directly.

jennpozner

“The main characters in Twilight seemed to embody antiquated, sexist gender stereotypes. Edward Cullen…spies on Bella, he stalks her (for “her own good”), he sneaks into her room to watch her sleep (without her consent) and even confesses to a deep, overpowering desire to kill her…”

lindsay.m.jolly

“Before you start talking about domestic violence maybe you should read Twilight or watch the books -- sure it isn’t great to encourage violence but it is certainly better than encouraging millions of young women to embrace the idea that the most perfect relationship includes threats of violence and stalking, as Edward commonly does with Bella.”

It’s one thing to write a book based around vampires, it’s another thing to make them abusive to people they are supposedly completely enraptured and in love with. Yes, Spike and Drew were abusive to each other, but that was their nature! They were vampires! Joss didn’t humanize and romanticize them! They were mean horrible, Brutal and soulless creatures! Stephanie Myers has created and romanticized the idea that being a woman and being abused is perfectly acceptable for “the perfect relationship” where he has flaws that are “enduring and charming”, and the poor man can’t control himself despite his best efforts. Shame on you Myers. Seriously.

Read the notes of the guy who created it, the answer to the question What would Buffy Do?

Credit goes to Wired.

Report: Google Hackers Stole Source Code of Global Password System

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* April 20, 2010 |
* 1:06 pm |
* Categories: Breaches, Crime
*

The hackers who breached Google’s network last year were able to nab the source code for the company’s global password system, according to The New York Times.

The single sign-on password system, which Google referred to internally as “Gaia,” allows users to log into a constellation of services the company offers — Gmail, search, business applications and others — using one password.

The hackers, who are still unknown, were able to steal the code after gaining access to the company’s software repository, which stores the crown jewels for its search engine and other programs.

Because the hackers grabbed the software, and do not appear to have grabbed customer passwords, users aren’t directly affected by the theft. But the hackers could study the software for security vulnerabilities to devise ways to breach the system that could later affect users.

Google announced in January that it and numerous other companies had been hacked in a sophisticated attack. The hackers had targeted source code repositories at many of the companies, including Google.

According to the Times, the theft began when an instant message was sent to a Google employee in China who was using Windows Messenger. The message included a link to a malicious website. Once the employee clicked on the link, the intruders were able to gain access to the employee’s computer and from there to computers used by software developers at Google’s headquarters in California.

The intruders seemed to know the names of the Gaia software developers, according to the Times. The intruders had access to an internal Google corporate directory known as Moma, which lists the work activities of every Google employee.

They initially tried to access the programmer’s work computers and “then used a set of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the repositories where the source code for the program was stored.”

The Times doesn’t elaborate on the set of sophisticated techniques the hackers used to access the source code, but in March, security firm McAfee released a white paper in relation to the Google hack that describes serious security vulnerabilities it found in software configuration management systems (SCMs) used by companies that were targeted in the hacks.

“[The SCMs] were wide open,” Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president for threat research told Threat Level at the time. “No one ever thought about securing them, yet these were the crown jewels of most of these companies in many ways — much more valuable than any financial or personally identifiable data that they may have and spend so much time and effort protecting.”

Many of the companies that were attacked used the same source-code management system made by Perforce, a California-based company, according to McAfee. The paper didn’t indicate, however, whether Google used Perforce or had another system in place with vulnerabilities.

According to McAfee’s earlier report, the malicious website the hackers used in the Google hack was hosted in Taiwan. Once the victim clicked on a link to the site, the site downloaded and executed a malicious JavaScript, with a zero-day exploit that attacked a vulnerability in the user’s Internet Explorer browser.

A binary disguised as a JPEG file then downloaded to the user’s system and opened a backdoor onto the computer and set up a connection to the attackers’ command-and-control servers, also hosted in Taiwan.

From that initial access point, the attackers obtained access to the source-code management system or burrowed deeper into the corporate network to gain a persistent hold.

According to the paper, the hackers were successful at accessing source code because many SCMs are not secured out of the box and do not maintain sufficient logs to help forensic investigators examining an attack.

“Additionally, due to the open nature of most SCM systems today, much of the source code it is built to protect can be copied and managed on the endpoint developer system,” the white paper states. “It is quite common to have developers copy source code files to their local systems, edit them locally, and then check them back into the source code tree…. As a result, attackers often don’t even need to target and hack the backend SCM systems; they can simply target the individual developer systems to harvest large amounts of source code rather quickly.”

Alperovitch told Threat Level his company had seen no evidence to indicate that source code at any of the hacked companies had been altered.

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/google-hackers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#ixzz0lktqXbk3

This if very cool, apparently with this volcano lighting erupts out of the mouth of the volcano.

Link here

Everything is amazing and nobody is happy

http://www.nerdist.com/2010/04/nerdist-podcast-10-live-largo-w-adam-savage-nsfw/

If you are a Mythbusters fan, This is a podcast for you. They hosted Adam savage this last week. This is hilarious it’s worth listening to repeatedly. But I will give a Warning. This is not for children, this has swearing and sexual connotation. It’s made of awesome, but NOT FOR CHILDREN.

You know social media has taken a new meaning to it’s existence when the library of congress decides that twitter needs to be archived.

I can see some valid points to this, but I’m not so sure that this is a wise idea. On one hand, there are millions of tweets of people saying that perhaps that they just got a blowjob. People have been getting blowjobs through the beginning of time. This isn’t a surprise to anyone and isn’t worth saving, because in 100 years, people will still be getting blow jobs. On the other hand, if someone announced that they have the cure for cancer that would be worth saving. However, something of that magnitude would be done through different channels and wouldn’t likely make it to twitter until after the fact. That data would be archived in history books. So would the after effect, where everyone turned into creatures that ate others humans leaving only will smith alive to redeem humanity.

I’m not saying that twitter is worthless, but as one news reporter put it. it’s a big segment of our digital Heritage, and we’ve already lost so much of it. While I agree that it is a huge part of our global digital heritage I’m not sure that most of twitter is worth saving. If twitter was mostly legitimate I could more easily understand that, but it’s not. it’s millions of people bitching about their day to day activities. The only other reason I could see that The Library of congress would want this would be to be able to track criminal activities through time. At which point this is a government move and not one really intended for the purpose of humanity.

Either way, I’m going to start filling my twitter with messages about blow jobs in 140 characters or less. I must fulfill my part of what’s worth saving in our digital Heritage!

technologizer.com
How tweet it is!
Library of congress twitter

In recent weeks I’ve become more and more discontent with my iPhone, with the introduction of the iPad and what it does and doesn’t do, a whole slew of new skeletons have come out of the closet. Lee Brimelow is a Platform “evangelist” for Adobe. He recently posted in his Flash blog. How Apple is slapping developers in the face, by limiting what language they are allowed to program in to make applications for their devices. Now this shouldn’t come a surprise really, Apple to me has always come off as a discontent controlling child who wants to control media at large, by allowing what we do and don’t view. They do it by making people spend a ton of money for their products, which in turn people feel like they need to use it because they spent so much on it. This seems like a really ridiculous notion for this economy. Whenever I’ve pointed this out to apple enthusiasts they insist it’s worth it by saying that Apple quality is superior. Seeing I’m now on my 2nd 3G iphone which has another malfunction that I again have to replace it; so I’m inclined to disagree. I’m citing that some have good luck, and those that have bad luck, anticipated the possibility of it and bought the extra warranty and therefore aren’t inclined to argue very hard. These people are happy to go back to their old devices and methods.

In addition to that most windows freaks went into it knowing that they stepped into a possibly unreliable world. Face it. Wither or not you’re an iphone freak, or a mac head; despite the fact that Apple may have a massive chunk on the Smartphone segment, they’re still a tiny blip on the map, that only survived because of Adobe. Because Of risc Processors, because Microsoft bought most of your stock and gave you a shit ton of money, to keep you afloat so they would not become a monopoly on the market. Yes, it’s true. It happened, Mac-heads don’t like to admit it, but it’s true.

Apple has done little to the face of innovation, they’ve advanced in tiny ways that have brought out surges of others ideas, but nothing so dramatically face changing since the Apple II that it’s losing the concept of what innovation is. Steve Jobs, is a controlling, smug, self-righteous son of a bitch. Who puts out products that causes an uproar. But the uproar is what causes the drive for people to use them, or come out with a way to make it do what it is fully capable of doing. If Steve wasn’t such a dumbass he’d look at the jailbroken apps available like lockinfo, and incorporate some of these into the iPhone OS. Rather than having a blatant disregard for the open developers who push the product to the limit and embrace their ideas he ignores it entirely.

Now that I’ve completely gone off on this tangent, I’m going to get to the point.

Apple is controlling, very much so. One paragraph in Lee’s post really struck me as almost a violation of our inherent 1st amendment rights.

“I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.”

Personally, this word bothers me a lot. “Forbidden”. If he is saying that they are unable to speak for themselves without fear of retribution? I can understand Apple wanting to protect the image of the company, but my question is if Apple was such a great place to work, then why wouldn’t they want to protect the image of the company? The answer is simple. It’s not.

Isn’t that one of the reasons why the country known as the U.S.A had the revolutionary war? Freedom of speech was so important to the founding fathers that it was the 1st amendment… not the 3rd or 13th.. but 1st. So not only have the government impending our 1st amendment rights, but private companies are doing it as well. Yet, this is also okay.

Job’s own ideology is shown to the general public (and owners of iPod Touches, iPhones, and now iPads) as a gesture of their enforcing his morals of the almighty Apple. They have removed any and all apps that might have an insinuation of sex or nudity or suggestion. But it didn’t stop there, they took it one more step too far. They removed a app of the Winter games because it had one picture of the speed skaters in her skin tight uniform receiving her gold medal.

Now excuse me if I’m slightly annoyed that people are not allowed to use their devices how they see fit. I understand that apple already had a certain amount of insane and ridiculous restrictions on apps that were being created, to further this and take it that far because it’s inappropriate for children? Or because developers might have ideas of their own? Since when is it’s apple’s right to be the moral judgment for parents? Why not just put an option for a parental lock on certain apps like a widget in the configuration?

There are plenty of ideas out there that you (Apple) could use, and it would make vast improvements in the UI alone of the iPhone OS. It’s time to Shit or get of the pot.

Honestly, the android phones are so much more customizable, and I’d rather get one so I can put what I want on it without restrictions to Flash or content. Unless Apple makes some serious changes in the next year, I’m ditching my phone.

I’ve added a few new plug ins’ one is to post my blog entries as link to facebook. The second is an update to make it iphone friendly. I’ve not tried it on an android but that is the next step.

Also, I’ve had the opportunity to play with the iPad. while it’s cool and it looks like a massive version of the iphone/iPod it is slightly different.
The interface allows for new customizations that your iphone didn’t like putting up a wall paper behind your home screen. Pictures and movies look absolutely gorgeous, but the speakers that are used are pathetic. you really need your own headphones if you’re going to enjoy much of anything with it.

Drawback, no flash support. I love the fact that in a month or two there will be a version that will work on 3G if you purchase a data plan, and that’s awesome. but what’s the point of having it web capable and able to go anywhere if it does not support flash? IF you want a large movie player for your kids to watch in the back seat of the car it would be a great device if it was blue tooth capable to do that, but it’s not.

Honestly, it’s a nice.. gimmick. But I have to say that Apple failed on this one. When my contract is up with my iPhone I’m going to ditch it. I for one am horribly disappointed. I won’t even use this thing as an iPod afterwords, I’ll buy a Zune.

Apple’s lack of ability for customization over Windows machine is a complete slap in the face to the public. I hope apple gets their act together, because in this economy, they shouldn’t be taking risks.

Online fear, loathing, and not giving a damn

A list of 21 apps that apple doesn’t want you to have. Because their current SDK won’t allow you to do this on a non-jailbroken Iphone

21 Apps

I’m a little late on saying this I know. However, after what happened with Tiger Woods, everyone has an opinion. However, I don’t think that Tiger Woods owes me, or any of his sponsors an apology. He was forced to Issue a public apology to his fans? The only person whom he owed an apology to was his wife. The rest of you who feel so inclined or vindicated in demanding as much needs to get your ego filled head of your ass.

In my opinion, that he did finally Man up. When his wife found out and beat him with a golf club and chased him out of their house, he sat in court during her Court hearing and said nothing. Keeping her out of jail. He had it coming, and he knew he had it coming. In all truth of the matter, there is probably a part of him that feels relieved that that was all he got, and that it was all over. He did in my opinion the right thing, He kept her out of what was almost assuredly a jail sentence.

If you compare this to how Chris Brown handled his own set of infidelities which was to beat the shit out of Rihanna, Tiger handled himself like a man and dealt with it.

I’m not a Golf or a Tiger fan. But I think that there is a point where the american people need to let people fuck up their own life and leave them alone.

It was announced today that Interplay and Masthead Studios confirmed the rumors of a Fallout MMO to be true. Not only that they slated a Beta time frame, sometime in 2012.

A game about post apocalyptic America, set in a year that’s supposed to bring on the apocalypse, the irony is to too great to pass up. I will laugh with joy if they decide to do the beta in January, and the release on Dec 21th 2012.  Not to mention there will be much giggling of me and several of the men of my office… I like that it would be much to the sounds of which will be similar to that of small school aged children of the female persuasion.

Read about it here

The word “meh” Makes the Collins – English Dictionary

Microsoft Files lawsuit to defend Visual Studio users

For once I can applaud MS for their involvement. This is a rather big deal. This is basicly an indirect attack on the Visual Studio Package as a whole. MS is protecting their own.

How much Professional and Open Source development is done on the Visual Studio package? Saying “Lots” is a touch insignificant. I know my own Development project wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for C#, Which is a language that MS developed.